It’s Worth The Time

We are a bunch of time-stressed people. We talk about all the things we’d do if we just had more time. We leave things undone because we run out of time. We take shortcuts in an attempt to buy some extra time. We’re suffering and we need more time!

It’s a fact that there are twenty-four hours in each of our days. And it would be real nice, not to mention real neat, if we could carve that up into three equal parts of eight for work, eight for personal/family, and eight for sleep. Is anyone giggling yet? Who has that life? Can anyone with a real life do it that way? I know I can’t. But I can decide, based on what is most important to me and what I value most, how to spend my time.

I choose the expression of ‘spending time’ here because it’s important. We know that once the day’s allotment of twenty-four hours is gone, it’s gone for good. If we’d spend our time investing in the really important things in our lives, like we’d spend our money investing in something we value, we’d be doing well. But many of the choices we make regarding our time don’t begin to reflect what’s important to us, or what we value. We get up, get going, get busy, get things done, get behind, get frustrated, get tired, get home, get to bed…get it? No wonder we’re screaming for more time. We aren’t making wise investments with what we have so we think having MORE time is the answer. More time just isn’t possible and it’s not the answer anyway.

Seth Godin’s quote, “You don’t need more time, you need to decide,” really gets my goat! And the reason why it does is because what he says is so true. We need to decide what’s most important and honor that.

Ultimately, we are the ones who are in control of our time. We might not think we are, but we are. We can’t have more than twenty-four hours each day, but if we want more time for a part of our lives than we currently have, we can make that happen. I realize it’s not easy, but we are not powerless. If the way we are spending our time is making us stressed, unfulfilled or unhappy, we have to change. Our lives are ours to create and the best time to get busy is right now. Seriously, right now.

I’ve found, over time, that it’s a wise investment to spend some time figuring out the following:

What we want more of in our lives.

What we want less of in our lives.

What we want our lives to stand for.

Who we want to be as we’re living our lives.

If we can figure these things out, we can begin to order our lives and invest our time much more wisely and with a lot less stress.

How we spend our time is our decision. How we spend our time determines the quality of our lives. It really is up to us. It’s worth the time if we want this to be “our time.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts and have you “like” and share this article. Thanks for being here!